(no subject)

[lisamoe]

From 0ccam

TIME Magazine's 100 Best English Language Novels (1923 to present)
Here's the list.

Which or how many have YOU read?

I've read:

Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret--Judy Blume

Beloved--Toni Morrison

The Catcher in the Rye--J.D. Salinger

A Clockwork Orange--Anthony Burgess

The Day of the Locust--Nathanael West

A Death in the Family--James Agee

The French Lieutenant's Woman--John Fowles

Gone With the Wind--Margaret Mitchell

The Grapes of Wrath--John Steinbeck

The Great Gatsby--F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter--Carson McCullers

The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe--C.S. Lewis

1984--George Orwell

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest--Ken Kesey

The Painted Bird--Jerzy Kosinski

Portnoy's Complaint--Philip Roth

Red Harvest--Dashiell Hammett

Things Fall Apart--Chinua Achebe

Watchmen--Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons

Not that many, I guess. Apparently I should have been digging into the literature in my youth instead of wasting all that time getting good at Galaga, cause now that I have kids and stuff the chances of me reading anything that requires concentration are pretty much nil.

Comments

[montykins.livejournal.com]

I've only read 22, and my list is heavily bolstered by the science fiction contingent:

Animal Farm, by George Orwell
Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret, by Judy Blume
The Berlin Stories, by Christopher Isherwood
The Big Sleep, by Raymond Chandler
Catch-22, by Joseph Heller
The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger
A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess
The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck
The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Infinite Jest, by David Foster Wallace
The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, by C.S. Lewis
Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov
Lord of the Flies, by William Golding
The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien
Neuromancer, by William Gibson
1984, by George Orwell
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, by Ken Kesey
Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut
Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson
The Sun Also Rises, by Ernest Hemingway
To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
Watchmen, by Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons

[a-spirited-soul.livejournal.com]

Thanks for posting this. This is now one of my goals - to read more of these. I've read some, but didn't count them up.

[0ccam.livejournal.com]

Well, you're way ahead of me.

[lisamoe.livejournal.com]

I have a minor in English, so you'd think I'd have more than this even, but of course a lot of what we read was older than the books on this list. I only read 7 of these on my own, the rest were in high school or college.

[mstami.livejournal.com]

I have a question for you? Does Dingo miss Bingo? Yep, the fish is surviving. :)

[lisamoe.livejournal.com]

Aaaaaccccckkkk! I forgot to come get the fish! What time would be good to come tomorrow and get him? It's been kind of a day, lol.

[mstami.livejournal.com]

That's ok Lisa. LOL Just call and come by whenever is convent for you. I promise not to tell Bingo you forgot him. :) I do hope you all had a terrific weekend.

[mstami.livejournal.com]

convenient even. Geez sorry

[lisamoe.livejournal.com]

I'll call you. We'll be over on your side of town most of the day. Thank you for hanging on to him. Dingo will be so happy to see him.

Hey, let me know sometime if you and K. could go to the zoo with us. Our membership is good for extra people and I'm trying to do some stuff like that before I have to go back to work.

[mstami.livejournal.com]

Cool! That sounds great. Wednesdays and Thursdays are good for us. However, with enough notice we can go on most days. Just let us know when you want to go. :)

[mistressxenobia.livejournal.com]

Oh fuck.
Icon love!

[yoak.livejournal.com]

What did you think of those members of the list that you've read? Do you consider them among the best qualifying novels that you've read?

I looked at this list when in college and thought it would make a good list to pick from and was sorely disappointed by some. It was my introduction to Joyce, for instance.

That said, some of those you list above including 1984 and Catcher in the Rye and even the Grapes of Wrath to a lessor extent I enjoyed tremendously, but I encountered them all before I encountered this list. ;-)

(And if you're wondering from whence I wandered in, it was from seeing a comment of yours in ozarque's journal. Hi!)

[lisamoe.livejournal.com]

I think it's a good representative sample of modern English language literature. I didn't enjoy a number of them (Things Fall Apart, the Painted Bird, The Day of the Locust in particular) that much so I have a hard time seperating out my own reaction from an impersonal analysis of whether they're the best-written. I think all of them likely deserve to be on this list, how about that? Of course some of these I read as a child or young adolescent and I don't know that I was a good judge of literature then (not that I necessarily am now, lol) to know how well done they were or not, just that I liked them and had an emotional reaction.

Watchmen being on the list surprised me a great deal. It is both well done and a good riveting read, but I wouldn't have thought it would be end up on a mainstream fiction list of this sort.